Description
Book SynopsisAge of Emergency examines how metropolitan Britons understood colonial violence in the two decades after V-E Day when "small wars" raged on the frontiers of empire in Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus.
Trade ReviewAge of Emergency is a masterwork of a new Imperial history which stares unblinkingly into the violence of colonial rule and exposes how that horror reached deeply into twentieth-century British life. Linstrum's achievement is to show that the end of empire in Britain was no less a domestic trauma than in France: British decolonization did not happen 'in a fit of absence of mind.' * Richard Drayton, King's College London *
Well-crafted and meticulously researched, this originally conceived work penetrates deep into the serial ambiguities of empire's end-not least the vexed question of how the British people grappled with imperial retreat. Age of Emergency traces the intricate strategies of evasion-the self-censorship, the silences, the 'circles of knowing'-and how these produced ubiquitous forms of tacit imperial knowledge in their own right. Brought to life with all manner of illuminating portraits-in-miniature, it offers a sophisticated new perspective on British society at the tipping point of decolonization. * Stuart Ward, author of Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain *
A sweeping, meticulous account of the reckoning with colonial brutality in post-war Britain. What happened in Kenya, Malaya, and Cyprus, Linstrum establishes beyond a doubt, was no secret back home. Age of Emergency masterfully explains how democratic publics come to live with-even to embrace-the violence done in their name. * Deborah Cohen, Northwestern University *
Meticulous, innovative, damning...Linstrum is innovative in the breadth of his research, trawling the BBC and ITV archives to explore how popular teleplays tried to make sense of endless colonial war. * Christopher Kissane, The Irish Times *
As Britons and other Europeans continue to confront the legacies of empire and especially of colonial violence today, this book is an urgent read for anyone interested in questions of culpability, knowledge, and what comes next for former colonial powers. * Taylor Soja, Europe Now Journal *
Intimate knowledge of the small wars of the twentieth century spread in what Erik Linstrum calls 'circles of knowing'. His exploration of how these circuits worked and overlapped is original and subtle. * Dublin Review of Books *
Age of Emergency documents a wide range of opposition. * TLS *
Compendious and insightful * TLS *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Wars Were Like a Mist Part I: Knowing about Violence Chapter 1: Out of Apathy Chapter 2: War Stories Part II: Justifying Violence Chapter 3: Violence without Limits Chapter 4: The Claims of Conscience Part III: Living with Violence Chapter 5: Covering Counterinsurgency Chapter 6: Performing Counterinsurgency Epilogue: The Afterlives of Colonial War Notes Bibliography Index
